The present invention relates, in general, to infant incubators and, in particular, to a humidifier for humidifying the air supplied to an infant being maintained and treated in an infant incubator.
As part of the maintenance and treatment of an infant in an incubator, the air supplied to the infant is humidified. Typically, infant incubators have built-in humidifiers through which filtered inlet air is passed. In addition, external humidifiers, which introduce filtered humidified air directly into the hood of the incubator, are available.
For those humidifiers which are part of the infant incubator, many different arrangements for humidifying the circulating air have been suggested or put into actual practice in the past. For example, infant incubators are available in which the water for humidifying the circulating air is held in a heated reservoir within the base of the incubator and the circulating air which is to be humidified is passed over the reservoir. Generally, those infant incubators which are in use today, with humidifiers arranged this way, have one or both of the following shortcomings. First, with the reservoir sized to accommodate enough water to avoid frequent refilling, the entire volume of water in the reservoir is heated to and maintained at the desired temperature, so that establishing, maintaining and changing the desired water temperature are more difficult than for lesser volumes of water. Second, the humidifiers are located within the base of the incubator at points which make difficult refilling the reservoir or removing the humidifier for cleaning or maintenance.
In the humidifier of the Incubator 8000 currently offered by Drager, water is supplied from three unheated bottles to a small, heated cup over which the circulating air is passed for humidification. The amount of water in the three unheated bottles is enough for twenty-four hours of typical humidifier operation.
The humidifier of the Drager Incubator 8000, however, is not arranged for convenient cleaning or replacement of the smaller, heated cup where humidification takes place. In this respect, the humidifier of the Drager Incubator 8000 suffers from the same shortcoming of humidifiers in many infant incubators which are currently available or have been suggested in the past.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,605 to Sasaki et al., a humidifying tank unit 68, having a water tank 81, is arranged for removal from its operating position within the infant incubator through the front of the incubator. The water tank is not heated directly. As heated air passes over the water tank, the air is humidified.